Fedora Weekly News Issue 236

Welcome to Fedora Weekly News Issue 236[1] for the week ending July 28, 2010. What follows are some highlights from this issue.

In announcements from the Fedora Project, a thank you and reward from FAMSCO on the many recent Fedora 13 release events, details on the Red Hat Bugzilla 3.6 upgrade public beta, and branches and feature freezes for the Fedora 14 tree. In Fedora In the News, a South African comparison between Fedora and Ubuntu projects, Fedora 13 review from a New Zealand LUG, and a Fedora article from Linux Format UK reposted. Quality Assurance brings news on QA statistics efforts, localization testing using Nitrate, and work on the F14 boot menu and bootloader. In Design Team news, decisions on Fedora 14 Alpha artwork, discussion around the Comfortaa font as a secondary branding tool, and work on a new Join page for the Design Team. Security Advisories completes this issue of FWN, with many security-related packages for Fedora 12 and 13 released over the past week.

The audio version of FWN - FAWN - is back! You can listen to existing issues[2] on the Internet Archive. If anyone is interested in helping spread the load of FAWN production, please contact us!

If you are interested in contributing to Fedora Weekly News, please see our 'join' page[3]. We welcome reader feedback: news@lists.fedoraproject.org

Over the years Red Hat has made substantial customizations to Bugzilla to fit into the Engineering tool chain. Over time the upstream has incorporated some of these customizations or solved them in different ways. Upgrading reduces our customization footprint (and thus maintenance) while bringing many bug fixes & enhancements.

The main area of focus for our public betas is stability. Functionality that currently works in our 3.4 code base should continue to work as expected in the new 3.6 release. These include various ajax optimizations, needinfo actor support, frontpage.cgi, product browser, several various UI enhancements, and of course the XMLRPC API.

Please feel free to point your various scripts and third party applications that use the XMLRPC API at the test server to make sure they continue to function properly.

There are numerous other changes behind the scenes that we haven't> listed. The goal is to make sure that functionality that people have come to expect in 3.4 is possible in the new system.

There are also numerous new features/fixes that are part of the upstream 3.6 release. For more detailed information on what has changed since the last release, check out the release notes page at [4] .

The database is a recent snapshot of the live database so should be useful for testing to make sure the information is displayed properly and changeable. Also with a full snapshot it is possible to test for any performance related issues. Email has been disabled so that unnecessary spam is not sent out. So feel free to make changes to bugs to verify proper working order.

We are asking for everyone to get involved as much as possible with testing and feedback on the beta releases to help us make this the most robust and stable release possible.

Please file any enhancement requests or bug reports in our current Bugzilla system at [5] . File them under the Bugzilla product and relevant component with the version 3.6. With everyone's help we can make this a great release.

Fedora 14 branching and dist-git roll out

Jesse Keating[1] on Sat Jul 24 06:54:53 UTC 2010 announced[2],"Hey all! It's that time again, we're gearing up to branch for Fedora 14 this coming Tuesday! There is a major twist this time around, we're going to attempt a roll out of dist-git!

Dist-git is our replacement for the CVS system we are currently using. This is a pretty big deal, but we're going to try to make it as smooth as possible. In the next few days I'll be finalizing our git server setup and polishing up the user interface tool you all will be using to interact with the source control and build system.

The conversion will take a couple days, which means our normal short outage for branching will be a bit extended. I wish there was another way, but converting over 9K cvs repos into git repos does take sometime. I really feel that this move is worth the extended outage.

The tool you all will use to interact with git and the buildsystem is called "fedpkg". It comes from the fedora-packager package. There is a version of it available now in all active Fedora and EPEL releases, although it is built to work against our staging environment where we have been testing the setup for a while. This setup is slightly different than the final version, but you can install it and poke around the help system to get a feel for what's going on. Most of the make targets have made it over and are named the same; build, sources, srpm, etc... Many of the targets can take arguments and options. Where the make system used shell variables, fedpkg uses options and arguments.
Each target takes a --help argument that will show any available options. Fedpkg does not yet have a man page, that may be coming soon.

We're also going to be working on wiki pages to document the new stuff and archive the old stuff. We're going to need help on this too, so if you want to pitch in, by all means!

As I mentioned above, this is an attempt. We are trying this pretty early, which I wouldn't normally do. However we have a good roll back plan. We are going to keep the CVS server as is, although turned read-only during and after the dist-git rollout. If something fails beyond reasonable repair with the dist-git attempt we will re-enable write access to the CVS server (after we branch it for Fedora 14). Otherwise we will keep it around, in some capacity, as a read-only reference point.

I'm certain we will run into some bumps along the way, and some wrinkles to iron out. I ask that you are patient with us as we work through these, and as we either get updates pushed out of fedpkg or make adjustments to the git repos on the git server. This transition has been a long time coming, and I'm really happy to be the one to make it happen. Keep in mind that this will be the first iteration of our transition, and it will operate mostly the same as dist-cvs did with a few improvements. Later on we will start to explore more interesting advancements such as automatic patch management with exploded sources, linking to upstream source repositories, automatic %changelog generation from git changelogs, or things I haven't even thought about. Most of all, we won't be using CVS any more and that feels really good to me.

If you're curious about how the new system will work or have concerns, or want to help, you can reply to this email thread or find me on IRC as "Oxf13" (that's an o, not a zero). If you run across bugs in fedpkg, you can file them in the fedora-packager hosted trac space [3] or just find me on IRC as well.

Thanks again for your patience, both in waiting so long for us to make this move, and for bearing with us during the transition."

If you have a feature that will not be feature complete by tomorrow that is okay. Simply change the wiki page category to Category:FeatureReadyForWrangler (edit text at the very bottom of the page) and include the reason and your plans in the commit comment. I'll see that your feature is targeted for Fedora 15 instead."

Fedora User Announcements

Fedora Events

Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Continuing from the recent announcement of new Fedora Project Leader, Jared Smith, this past week saw one more story in the trade press on this. from PC World.

Fedora 13: what you need to know (techradar.com/Linux Format)

Kara Schlitz forwarded[1] a repost from Linux Format about Fedora 13, from the blog techradar.com:

"Corporate backing and a large supportive community – almost all Linux distributions can boast of at least one half of that.

Fedora, since its inception in late 2003 as Red Hat's community distribution, has nurtured around itself a devoted community. It has
achieved this after providing, release after release, an innovative and
complete distribution that demands attention and respect.

Being a rather large distribution (the number of DVD distributions now
pales in comparison to single CD variants), Fedora 13 has something for
just about every variety of Linux user."

Fedora vs Ubuntu (MyBroadband - South Africa)

"The difference between Ubuntu and Fedora lies primarily in their
approaches to the end product they produce. Ubuntu's approach is to
produce an easy-to-use desktop alternative to Windows. While not a
Windows clone it is designed to be used by anyone keen to leave Windows
behind. And in this it is remarkably successful.

Fedora, on the other hand, strives to make a desktop operating system
that offers the best that the world of free and open source software has
at the time. It routinely includes software that many other
distributions consider too experimental to use and yet, somehow, manages
to team that with stability."

Rahul Sundaram forwarded[1] a posting from a New Zealand LUG about Fedora 13, from the perspective of an engineer:

"This is (hopefully) the first in a series of posts in which members of
the LUG will detail their personal Linux set-ups and what they use them
for. I’m going to start out by detailing my set-up which is based on
Fedora 13. As a Computer Systems Engineer use my system(s) largely for
developing software, both for desktop platforms and embedded systems.
Therefore this article isn’t really for those new to computers, but it
should be of use to those who are tech-savvy on other platforms. I’ll
start by giving a quick overview of how I came to be a Fedora user, give
a description of Fedora as a distribution and then give an overview of
my system."

QA metrics

Kamil Paral asked for feedback[1] on the topic of gathering statistics on QA activities, as part of a Fedora-wide 'Fedora Hall Of Fame' project[2]. He asked what would be the most important tools to monitor and the most important characteristics to gather. Jóhann Guðmundsson pointed out some of the pitfalls that can come with trying to measure and reward voluntary contributions[3]. James Laska pointed out that gathering statistics would be valuable in ways beyond trying to reward contributors[4]. Jóhann clarified that he was only concerned with the 'Hall of Fame' concept and agreed that statistics could be useful in monitoring and improving overall team performance[5]. Kamil thought that in practice the negative effects Jóhann feared would not be so pronounced[6]. Jóhann followed up with some concrete suggestions of areas and numbers that would be interesting[7].

Localization testing

Following on from last week's coverage of Igor Pires Soares's localization testing discussion[1], Noriko Mizumoto suggested[2] using the newly open-sourced Nitrate tool[3] for tracking the tests. Igor asked[4] if the tool was yet packaged for Fedora and deployed in Fedora Infrastructure. James Laska reported[5] that it was not, but said he thought it would be a good candidate to be included. Later, Igor announced[6] that he had made an initial set of updates to the template[7] for Fedora 14.

Boot menu release criterion proposal

After a contentious first Fedora 14 blocker bug review meeting[1], Adam Williamson proposed two alternative ways to cover boot menu functionality in the release criteria[2]. He suggested either having a basic test of essential functionality (the installer eventually boots without manual interaction) at the Alpha stage and a more advanced test (the graphical boot menu appears as intended) at Beta or Final stage, or simply having the more advanced test at Alpha stage. James Laska[3] and Jesse Keating[4] both came down in favour of simply requiring the menu to work correctly at Alpha stage.

Bootloader menu release criterion

Adam Williamson announced[1] that, following the list discussion, he had added the simpler version of the proposed release criterion mentioned in last week's issue to the Fedora 14 Alpha release criteria[2]. Rui He added a validation test to check this[3].

Lessons learned about update process

Kevin Fenzi announced[1] that he had created a page to track lessons learned from problems in the update process[2], and asked the group to document any serious issues they had experienced involving updates to stable releases so that FESCo could benefit from the information in planning changes to the update processes and tooling.

Design

Fedora 14 Alpha Artwork

As scheduled, at the latest weekly IRC meeting[1] the Design Team decided on the "winning" concept for Fedora 14 "We decided to go with Kyle Baker's latest iteration for the alpha". The team is interested in receive feedback as early as possible, so Martin Sourada wrote a blog post[2] pushed to Planet[3]. The package is being built and will land into Rawhide soon.

Design Team Weekly Meeting

Máirín Duffy started a debate[1] about the efficiency of the Design Team weekly IRC meetings "Are you able to make the meetings? Are you going? If not, how come? Is there anything we could change about the meetings to make them easier for you to attend? How can we make the meetings more fun?". Jef van Schendel supported[2] extended talks "I think the idea of having extended discussions after the meetings would be great", Martha Benitez pointed[3] to them as a good learning experience "I find the meetings a good way to learn more about all this and they are certainly an opportunity to get more involved" and Nicu Buculei encouraged[4] more the social part "I think we should do more socializing at those meetings, even if we do less work done."

The Comfortaa Font

Fabian A. Scherschel reopened[1] the talk about introducing Comfortaa as the new secondary font for Fedora branding with a complaint about the shape of one letter "As I mentioned in the meeting yesterday, I love the way Comfortaa looks and I think it goes well with the Fedora logo, the only problem I have with it
is the way the capital 'i' looks" and at the latest IRC meeting[2], after a few weeks of evaluation, the Design Team decided in favor of Comfortaa, the evaluation for the body text is still open "We still need to make a Droid Sans vs. Cantarell decision."

New Join Page

After Michael Beckwith created[1] a new 'Join Page' for the Design Team[2] and Emily Dirsh added[3] a round of improvements from the perspective of a new contributor, the page went live[4], there is hopping this will make easier for new people to start contributing.